JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Ruashi copper mine, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), once again achieved increased production in the June quarter.

Terence Goodlace, CEO of diversified mining group Metorex, said in a statement on Friday that the mine had produced 5 245 t of copper in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

This was 16,5% higher than the expected 4 500 t.

Cobalt production, at 568 t for the quarter, was 26% higher than the 450 t Metorex had expected it to produce.

In May, the group reported that copper output at the mine had increased by 21% to 1 847 t and cobalt production by 33% to 214 t in that month, with Goodlace noting that this had been its highest production levels, to date, at the time.

“Plant debottlenecking continues to be a key focus and satisfactory progress has been made with improving reagent circuits. The resource and reserve infill drilling programme is still on track and it is planned to report new resource and reserve numbers early in September 2009 when we release the Metorex annual results,” Goodlace said on Friday.

The drilling programme at Ruashi, which Metorex started in January to improve confidence in the geological and orebody interpretation and to enable moving the Ruashi 1 resource into the measured category, had been completed in June.

All samples had been submitted to the Ruashi mine laboratory for analyses and had been assayed and the results captured in a relational data base, Metorex stated.

It added that new information continued to support the historical drilling data, with a number of high-grade copper and cobalt zones in the Ruashi two and three pits confirmed.

To subscribe to Mining Weekly's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.